HT Choice Aerial 10T or B&W N803?
Well, after hours of storefront listening sessions, I’ve narrowed my speaker choices down to three. B&W N803, Aerial 10T, or B&W N802’s. Due to WAF (Wife acceptance factor), anything with a larger foot print will not work. I’m looking for comments of experience, before I make a final decision.
We have some speaker position space restrictions. The N803’s will fit fine, but the other two will press the physical space a bit more. The final pair will set 6 feet apart and 2 ½ feet from the wall, with a fireplace angled across one corner. I have sound absorption panels behind the speaker positions, side walls and rear wall. The space contains heavy padded furnishings, on a cement slab covered with carpeting and sheet rock walls. It has 9ft ceilings and is a total 30ft long, 15ft wide. The actual listening position is 11ft from the fronts of my current speakers.
We listen to HT and just music 60/40, although I’d prefer more 2 channel music. :-)
The current equipment set-up is the following:
Class’e SSP-30 pre-amp
Class’e CAV-180 5 channel X180 into 8ohm or 360 into 4ohm
Energy Sub XL-S10 200W (Planning upgrade to better sub)
Source components Jolida JD-100 tube CD, Denon DVD-2800, no turntable… yet.
I like a good balance of bass with vocals, mid and high freq detail, so getting equal and realistic sound coverage is the objective. Long term, I’m still looking at other amplication upgrades as an option, so the power requirements of the Aerial’s don’t deter me too much. I’ve leaned towards the Aerials, the dealer has had great upstream power Class’e CAM-350’s to do the demos, and the room width is comparable. The B&W dealer has used 80W – N803’s to 125W – N802’s amplification to drive the speakers, and the ceiling heights and room widths are much larger than my space. I like the smaller footprint of the N803’s, but don’t want to regret my choice. I did see that Stereophile, has given the N803 an ‘A-restricted LF’ rating (Oct 2002), but how would it sound head to head with the Aerial’s? In the listening sessions, I’m now having trouble determining a clear winner, given the differences in power and space sizes used. I do gain the sense that the Aerial’s are a bit laid back, but the vocals and space realism are stellar. The N803’s have a nice broad sound stage. They are both great speakers. Is my only choice to do an in home demo of each speaker? Other options?
